<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Spirit Guardians by grumpyhedgehogs</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122022">Spirit Guardians</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpyhedgehogs/pseuds/grumpyhedgehogs'>grumpyhedgehogs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Crown of Candy - Fandom, Dimension 20 (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Afterlife, Character Death, Closure, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Jossed, Mild Angst, Peace after Death, Protectiveness, Spoilers, Spoilers up to ep 9, Sugar Plum Fairy - Freeform, hints of found family, short fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:41:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>821</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpyhedgehogs/pseuds/grumpyhedgehogs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lapin waits and watches and protects. This is what he does. </p>
<p>Then he dies.</p>
<p>But Lapin has never been one to lie down on the job.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lapin Cadbury &amp; Everyone, Lapin Cadbury &amp; House Rocks, Lapin Cadbury &amp; Jet Rocks, Lapin Cadbury &amp; Peppermint Preston</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Spirit Guardians</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There are not enough fics about Lapin and if I have to rectify this by my own hand, so be it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The smell of sugar plums should be overwhelming here but it isn’t. The spun sugar of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s gazebo shines purple in the perpetual afternoon of Lapin’s afterlife. The grass here is long and the air is fresh and only tinged by sugar plums the slightest bit. Preston roots in the dirt around the gazebo frequently, squealing excitedly. He sometimes brings Lapin seeds he does not know what to do with. </p>
<p>Lapin plants them back in the dirt, creates water to feed them--he’s not sure how his spells still work now, since he’s dead and the Sugar Plum Fairy should reasonably have taken back the power she gave him so long ago, now that he’s completed her favors--and he and Preston wait for their garden to bloom. The first time Lapin laughs after his death is when the first sprigs of peppermint flowers break through the soil. He should have known; he hopes when his time comes, that he can show Liam his work. He wonders if the child would be proud.</p>
<p>Lapin is never tired here. Neither is Preston. They do not need to eat or to sleep or to rest. The Sugar Plum Fairy has been annoyingly accommodating; Lapin is inclined to believe she did not expect the brutality of his death and feels a bit responsible for him. He doesn’t see a reason to stop overlooking her mistake--that he was dead as soon as he became a warlock, not because he agreed to watch out for the House of Rocks for her--if it gets both himself and Preston such a nice afterlife.</p>
<p>There is a divining pool in the center of the gazebo. This is why Lapin does not leave just yet. He could; both he and Preston could. The Sugar Plum Fairy told them they could leave, that they’d have real afterlives, ones suited just for them, waiting for them if they continued on down the road beside the gazebo. </p>
<p>But the divining pool is in the gazebo, in the Sugar Plum Fairy’s version of the path to Lapin’s afterlife, and so Lapin stays. </p>
<p>The pool flickers when he touches it, ripples and swirls and always reveals what he most wants to see. It is always the same series of faces, ones he never knew he cared so much about until it was almost too late. He’d asked the Fairy if theirs was a house worth saving. He knows better now; theirs is a house worth dying for. Preston is in agreement.</p>
<p>There is a circular bench running around the edges of the gazebo, and Lapin spends his days there, with Preston curled in his lap or squeezing under his feet or dropping so many seeds around the floorboards. (For however much he regrets Liam going without his precious pet, Lapin is glad he is not truly alone.) Lapin watches in the divining pool every hour of every day; sometimes it is boring, they are sleeping or training or stuck in a jail cell and haven’t figured out how to get out yet, and that is when Lapin snorts and sighs and plants the seeds Preston brings him. But he never leaves, never moves on. He waits, and watches and it is a perfect agony, that he cannot complete the cycle he used to go through in life; he would wait and watch and protect. Wait, watch, protect. Wait, watch, protect. Die for it, if he has to.</p>
<p>Now he can only wait, and watch. And so Lapin does. He lifts Preston into his arms so the pig can see too, as Liam would want it, and ripples the pool and looks at their faces and he waits.</p>
<p>He is waiting for Jet when she steps onto the road to her own afterlife. She gasps his name and stares like she can't believe he's really here. "Why haven't you left yet?"</p>
<p>“There is peace beyond,” he tells her gently as she crushes Preston to her chest and heaves sobs. “But the faces of your--of our house are here. I wonder, would you like to wait for them with me?”</p>
<p>It is the first time in a very long time anyone has hugged him. Jet’s arms are strong and sure and she meets his eyes head-on as she pulls back and nods. Preston winds around their ankles and drops a handful of seeds at her feet, slobbering on her boots. </p>
<p>And so they sit in the gazebo and watch the divining pool and Lapin puts his hand gently on Jet’s shoulder sometimes, puts Preston in her arms when she cries for Ruby. He plants the seeds and waters them and watches and waits.</p>
<p>He must wait. He must watch. And perhaps, with Jet by his side and Preston at their feet, something of their spirits can pass from the beyond to the mortal plane and protect their family, just a little. </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>